From Free Will Astrology:
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free,” said the sculptor Michelangelo about a statue he made. Let that approach be your guide in the coming weeks, Leo. Proceed according to the hypothesis that the beautiful thing you want to create is embedded in stuff that’s hiding its true nature, and your job is simply to liberate it from what’s extraneous.
Taken in the pond at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.
Week 12 – Waiting. From the 52 weeks self portrait series.
Because I’ve been feeling down this evening I decided to dig up and read the inspiring words in last month’s newsletter from Another Girl at Play. You should read it too.
For further cheering up good measures, here a list of good things from the weekend:
1. Friday night hanging out with Mandy to see Dusk Dances in Stanley Park.
2. Some much needed time alone at home on Saturday morning.
3. Surviving the yogathon despite my worries I wouldn’t be able to endure the sun and heat. (Phew!)
4. Buying a new carry-on sized suitcase in preparation for an upcoming trip.
5. Hanging out at Jericho beach reading my book and playing badminton.
Looking for things to do this weekend? How about either of these:
Dusk Dances in Stanley Park
Aeriosa Dance Company at the Main Branch Library. (Scroll down for details)
Thanks to Siobhan for the heads up about Dusk Dances. I used to look forward to their performances in Toronto every summer and had no idea they were in town.
I decided to enter a photo contest being run by a new data storage company called PutPlace. They are looking for photos of people making the kind of face one makes when suddenly confronted with a major loss of data. I know I would be absolutely horrified (as evidenced by my photo) and also devastated if I lost any of my best photographs and didn’t have a backup… I suppose I would actually look a lot less campy and over-the-top if it actually happened.
The contest closes on July 31st, and the winner gets a one year subscription for 100 GB of data storage at PutPlace.com and a $200 USD Amazon gift certificate.
Just four more days until the Camp Moomba Yogathon and Blissfest I am participating in at Thunderbird Stadium. I decided to re-post something about this because my original entry may have been missed a few weeks ago when the RSS feed wasn’t working.
The yogathon means a 108 minute long session of yoga for the thousands of people who participate. The funds raised through the event go towards sending children whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS to Camp Moomba, to give them a chance at a normal summer of fun. This will be my third time participating, and it’s something I look forward to taking part in every summer if I can. Last year we did the yogathon in heavy rain, which was not something I was expecting to enjoy as much as I did.
If you can please help me reach my fundraising goal. At the moment I am 76.67% of the way there (according to gifttool).
Camp Moomba Yogathon & Blissfest
July 12, 2008
UBC Thunderbird Stadium
You may have noticed the title of this blog recently changed to something new: Canvas to the Imagination. The words are from a quote by Henry David Thoreau, “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” They were suggested by Ariane, and I felt immediately it was the best title for my blog. I’ve always wanted something better than “the art of Rachael Ashe.” Thank you so much Ariane, because it makes my blog a much more special place for me than it has been for awhile.
The new template design and upgraded WordPress is all thanks to Boris. Now I just need to get in there and do some tweaking.
On my trip home to visit my family in May, I went through most of the stuff I left behind when I moved to Vancouver, and as usual brought back a few things with me. Among everything I reclaimed two long lost giclée prints I did of this image in a workshop at Toronto Imageworks many years ago. They’ve been sandwiched carefully between paper and cardboard waiting for me to do “something” with them. It can be one of the downsides of being a creative person, to have more creations than one person usually has wall space for – and so some become gifts to appreciative friends (though not these.)
This week in Leo-dom, brought to my inbox by Free Will Astrology:
Leo (July 23-August 22) – Are you up for some cutting-edge slashing and smashing and crashing? I’m talking about slashing the price you’ve been paying for following your dreams; smashing beliefs that made sense years ago but are irrelevant now; and crashing parties where your future teachers and allies are gathered. Once you get the hang of all that, Leo, you can move on to other brilliant demolitions, like cracking codes, breaking trances, and shattering spells cast on you by the past.
I like the sound of this.
The rest of my 52 weeks set on flickr.
Sometimes it is a struggle to take a self portrait every week. Most of the time I don’t really feel like taking my own photo, and then there is the lack of inspiration… I really want to use this project as a means for producing a body of my best work and not just do a quick one off to fulfill the weekly obligation.
For week ten procrastination got the better of me and I left things to the last minute. I was also really uninspired. Then I bought myself a bouquet of peonies and decided to use them as the focus of the shot. The original version was quite a technically weak shot, with bad lighting and me looking very tired. Thanks to photoshop and the final touch of a free texture from NinianLif on flickr, I came up with an image I like a lot.